Roll-fed printers are a well-known type of printers. In roll-fed printers, a recording medium such as paper is wound up on an input roll and then fed into, and guided along, a path through the printer, unwinding the input roll by and by along the process. In this way, the recording medium is roll-fed (i.e. taken from a roll and fed) to a marking unit of the printer which applies a marking material (prints) onto the recording medium
Roll-to-roll printers are a common type of roll-fed printers and are characterized in that the recording medium is, after images have been printed on it, wound up on an output holder of an output roll by and by along the process.
Some roll-fed printers comprise a cutting unit, i.e. a cutter, being configured to cut the recording medium after images have been printed on it such that the printer does not output the entire contiguous recording medium but instead cut pieces of it.
Some roll-fed printers comprise a laminating unit, i.e. a laminator, being configured to laminate the recording medium after images have been printed on it such that the robustness of the printed images is increased.
Roll-fed printers are very efficient devices for forming a large number of images requiring a large amount of the recording medium, as the wound-up input rolls are comparatively easy to handle by both the printers and their operating personnel. Accordingly, little or no supervision by personnel is needed for roll-fed printers, especially for roll-to-roll printers, as the marked recording medium is automatically stored on the output roll.
A print job may be added to the print queue automatically, directly, by means of a job submitter or may be dragged from a job list area into the print queue. A roll planner may be part of the print queue which also shows future events like pauses, inspection moments, cuts, etc. The roll planner also shows how much space is left on the recording medium and is used by the operator to optimize the jobs in time to minimize the number of roll changes.
However, finishing like cutting or laminating sometimes has its own requirements. For example, if a smaller image that has to be cut is followed by a larger image, a result may be that some unintended cuts are made in the large image. It takes some time to adapt positions of knifes. Another example is that in order to laminate a roll additional white space is needed at a start of the roll. Another example is that in order to post-process a number of printed images on the roll, a predetermined amount of length meters of the roll, for example x meters, is desired for the post-processing machine, so a predetermined cut may be planned every x meters of the roll.
It is desirable to have a method for controlling a roll-fed printing apparatus that makes optimum use of the available resources and enables faultless finishing of the printed images on the roll. It is also desirable to have a roll-fed printing apparatus capable of executing such a method.